Connecticut's Musical Heroes -- Natives And Adoptees

Phenomenally Talented Music Figures From Charles Ives to Paul Robeson

February 23, 2014|By STEVE METCALF, Special To The Courant, The Hartford Courant

Are we a musical state? We are indeed. But our performances and organizations tell only part of the story. In some ways, the vitality and range of Connecticut's musical history is best indicated by the large and ever-lengthening roster of notable music figures who were either born here or made Connecticut their home for a significant portion of their lives.

This is just a small suggestion of that roster:

>>Marian Anderson (1897-1993) — One of the great voices, and great figures, of the 20th century, contralto Anderson was at the center of one of the most visible incidents of the American civil rights struggle. In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow Anderson to sing at Washington's Constitution Hall, then a non-integrated facility. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (after resigning from the DAR in a blistering letter), and reportedly with the assistance of her husband, arranged for Anderson to sing instead at an outdoor concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. That concert, held Easter Sunday, drew 75,000 people, a nationwide radio audience in the millions, and international headlines. Anderson, who had enjoyed a solid but quiet career as a concert singer, became a worldwide celebrity and symbol. In 1955, she again attracted global attention by becoming the first black artist to perform at the Metropolitan Opera. Although articles and reference books often identify Anderson as an opera singer, that Met appearance was, by her choice, the one and only time she appeared on an operatic stage. In 1940, the publicity-shy Anderson and her husband purchased a multi-acre property in Danbury — later to be called Marianna Farm —- where she lived for most of her remaining years. Anderson's later years were private, although townspeople would often see her shopping or attending tag sales. One local recalled that she had a good eye for a bargain.

>>Leroy Anderson (1908-1975) — A son of Swedish immigrants, born and raised in Cambridge, Mass., the soft-spoken composer of "The Syncopated Clock," "Serenata," "The Waltzing Cat," Fiddle Faddle" and many other classic orchestra miniatures, originally contemplated becoming a linguist. But a couple of early successes writing short pieces for the Boston Pops, and the steady encouragement of the Pops' young conductor Arthur Fiedler, convinced him to make music his career. After serving in the war, Leroy and his wife Eleanor moved to Woodbury in the 1940s, began a family and remained there the rest of his life. Anderson already had a number of hits to his credit, but it was in Woodbury (during a mid-summer heat wave, no less) that he sketched out the piece that eventually became his most famous and enduring work, "Sleigh Ride." The Courant was the first paper to make the claim (never disputed) that "Sleigh Ride" has been interpreted by a wider stylistic range of musical artists than any other piece of Western music. Among them: The Chipmunks, the New York Philharmonic, the Ronettes, Captain Kangaroo, Ella Fitzgerald, the Ventures, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

>>Victor Borge (1909-2000) — The one-of-a-kind Danish musical entertainer initially studied, in his native country, to become a concert pianist. But even as a youth he worked small sight gags into his recitals, and he later admitted he was smitten by the ability to generate laughter. In 1939 he sailed to America on what he claimed was the last passenger ship to depart from Europe before the war halted such transportation. He settled in New York and acclimated himself to American culture by watching movies in 10 cent midtown theaters. The self-tutorials worked: within a couple of years he was working regularly on national radio programs, including Big Crosby's. Shortly thereafter he opened on Broadway in his own one-man show, "Comedy in Music." The show featured Borge's trademark puns and wordplay, his affectionate skewering of the conventions of classical music (The "Caro Nome" from "Rigoletto" would be introduced as the "Cockamamie from Rigor Mortis'') and his own signature device, phonetic punctuation. The latter consisted of Borge reading aloud from a sappy, made-up love story, rendering all the punctuation marks as vivid, and frequently indelicate audible sounds.

Borge lived most of his adult life in Connecticut, first in Southbury where, as a kind of semi-legit second career, he raised Cornish game hens and helped to bring those succulent little birds to American dining tables. He later moved to an imposing oceanside mansion in Greenwich, one feature of which was a room that contained two side-by-side concert grand pianos. Borge made many appearances with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, including one 1980 outdoor concert on the rolling Cigna lawn in Bloomfield, to a crowd estimated at 50,000. According to the Courant's account, he opened that concert with a vintage Borgian quip: